In medicine, ultrasound has become one of the most utilized imaging methods. Ultrasound applications employ a transducer that generates and sends ultrasound waves into a patient. Ultrasound can be used to guide needles and catheters to a site under the skin for biopsies and insertion into blood vessels. These ultrasound guided techniques have dramatically increased the accuracy of hitting the target blood vessel or tissue while decreasing the number of complications of such procedures performed without ultrasound. However, since an ultrasound probe is not sterile, there exists a risk of introducing infection if the probe crosses into the area where the needle or catheter punctures the skin.
To decrease the likelihood of infection from the probe, sterile ultrasound kits are typically used that include a sterile cover for the probe, sterile ultrasound gel that is needed as a contact with the skin surface to use the probe, and/or sterile drapes. These kits add significant cost to the procedure, take time to prepare and use, and generally require two individuals to use—the person performing the procedure and an assistant.
As such, it would be desirable to provide a device that provides a sterile barrier between a puncture site and an ultrasound probe site without the aforementioned limitations. Methods relating to such a device would also be desirable.